202 



hacienda de coco, as of a hacienda de canna, or 

 de cacao. In a fertile and moist ground, the 

 cocoa-tree begins to bear fruit in abundance the 

 fourth year ; but in dry soils it yields produce 

 at the end of ten years only. The duration of 

 the tree does not in general exceed eighty or a 

 hundred years; and it'& mean height at this pe- 

 riod is from seventy to eighty feet. This rapid 

 growth is so much the more remarkable, as 

 other palm-trees, for instance, the moriche% 

 and the palm of Sombrero f , the longevity of 

 which is very great, frequently do not reach 

 above fourteen or eighteen feet in sixty years. 

 In the first thirty or forty years, a cocoa- tree 

 of the Gulf of Cariaco bears every lunation a 

 cluster of ten or fourteen nuts* all of which 

 however do not ripen. It may be reckoned, 

 that, on an average, a tree produces annually 

 a hundred nuts, which yield eight fiascos % of 

 oil. The fiasco is sold for two rials and a half 

 of plate, or sixteen pence. In Provence, an 

 olive-tree thirty years old yields twenty pounds> 

 or seven flascoes of oil, so that it produces some- 

 thing less than a cocoa-tree. There are in the 

 Gulph of Cariaco haciendas of eight or nine thou- 

 sand cocoa-trees. They resemble, in their pic- 



* Mauritia flexuosa. 

 f Corypha tectorum. 



+ One fiasco contains 70 or 80 cubic inches, Paris men- 

 sure. 



